


Christmas at the Tower

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Camellia sinensis [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas fic, Clint does nothing by halves, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, How Bucky joined the team, M/M, Other, Tony understands what it's like to be lost, and makes bad choices when drunk, vaguely festive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:40:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With such a mix of histories and backgrounds, most of them bad, Christmas can be an emotional time at Avengers Tower (and indeed throughout the superhero community). But when it comes right down to it, the people you can trust are family, especially the family you choose. Bucky hasn't had anything resembling family for a long, long time, but maybe that's finally going to change. After all, Christmas is a time of miracles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas at the Tower

The Avengers tower had suddenly become a very busy place with Christmas approaching. Of course, every single person living in it had different ideas of what Christmas was like. Steve was used to old-style Christmas' without much money where the emphasis was on family and being grateful for what you had. Natasha... didn't like Christmas, though she certainly wouldn't talk about why, and Thor didn't understand the Midgardian festival (though they managed to explain it to him in such a way that the key concepts made sense, apparently they sounded familiar, something like an old festival he had celebrated years before). Clint had never had a real Christmas, though Coulson had often tried to make it happen at SHIELD. The year before he had gone to Phil's parents' house for Christmas and had rather taken the experience to heart. Bruce had memories from his foster family if nothing else, and Tony... well, he wasn't a Grinch, but it made him very uncomfortable. 

Christmas had always been a very fake season, and for something that was supposed to be about love it was very difficult for a man who had never really known or understood that love. His father had always been more interested in the alcohol that was being served and in making the perfect impression on society than having time for his son and all it had done was leave Tony with a cold hollow feeling inside. The last few years he hadn't done much socialising in the festive season, and he usually just spent the day holed up with the bots, eating pizza and resolutely not watching any kind of schmaltzy Christmas crap on the TV.

The thing was that Steve was absolutely swept away by the magic of all of it, the knowledge that this year he could afford to at least get something small for all his friends, and that maybe they could have a special meal. It was impossible to ignore a starry-eyed Captain America, and he did make the very valid point that now they had a family to share it with. Of course, Tony wasn't really sure how to act around a family, let alone at Christmas time, but he was prepared to make the effort. There was very little he wouldn't do for Steve, it was an excuse to engineer people things and... much as he hated to admit it, Clint had some pretty damn convincing puppy eyes. He wasn't sure how Agent managed to put up with them, Natasha at least seemed to be immune to that kind of thing. 

That was how they had ended up organising a Secret Santa and Steve had been his usual bright eyed and red cheeked self even more so than usual if that were possible, always hiding things and going out on secret shopping trips, returning with bulging bags of things he managed to secrete and which Jarvis refused to reveal the location or contents of. Even Clint wasn't getting anywhere with bribing Jarvis, and in some little way it kind of annoyed Tony that the archer was better at schmoozing with his system than he was. It annoyed him even more that he didn't care that much if he stopped to think about it. He had never needed a family, he had never wanted a family, and somehow he had ended up with one that wouldn't go away. He would absolutely never admit to himself that he liked having them around. No Sir. He tolerated them and it was the most efficient way that the Avengers could possibly work, and if he spent much more time in the lab verbally sparring with Bruce and talking through scientific impossibilities in a language that nobody else comprehended and his nights snuggled up with Captain America after amazing sex well those were just bonuses and he definitely didn't need to live with his boyfriend to have a boyfriend. He would keep telling himself that in the hopes that one day he might believe it. Though that hope seemed to be getting slimmer by the day. 

He wasn't sure how it had happened (he suspected he should blame Pepper), but somehow Clint had gotten hold of a credit card which was linked to Tony's own personal funds. This fact was brought home to him when he came home to find the living room covered in more glitter than should have been physically possible. Clint was concealed by a pile of tinsel and trying to make lametta angels. Tony decided he had not yet had enough coffee to deal with this and hit the kitchen with a vengeance.

Bruce was already in the kitchen, making himself something involving marshmallows, bits of candy cane, chocolate buttons of all three shades and what looked like an awful lot of hot chocolate powder, humming to himself as he measured it out into little cellophane baggies and tied it up with ribbon. Tony stopped in the doorway and stared.

"Okay that's way too festive to be a drug deal, and it's the wrong colour, unless those are some really bad drugs, so what the fuck is going on here?!"

"Snowman soup. My mother used to make it when I was a kid and it was... it's one of the things I remember. One of the things that was good about Christmas and which I always missed while I was away whenever I actually had time to spare a thought for Christmas. And so I'm making it for everyone."

"That's more than six bags Bruce, even I can count. Well, seven including Agent, I guess. Eight with Pepper. Nine with Bucky. Eleven with Jane and Darcy. Why are there so many people."

"Yeah, but these are also for our friends, so that's Carol and Drew and Rhodey... Jess and Luke, Sue, Matt, Johnny, Ben, Jasper and his wife and their kids..."

"I notice that Reed wasn't on the list."

Bruce arched a sardonic eyebrow.

"I said friends."

"So you're busy and it's the festive season already."

"I don't buy the religious aspect but it's an important time for family. And we are family. We all are, because we're the only one we've got."

"Well you and Clint."

"Think about what you've just said and how it might apply."

"...That's... never mind. Not the point. Look. I have a problem okay."

"Okay, and what is your problem Mister Stark? Would you care to share it with the class?"

"No, I'd rather just share it with you if that's okay."

"Spit it out or I will blow hot chocolate in your face and disappear in a cloud of sweet smelling goodness."

"...I don't know what to get Steve for Christmas."

"Okay, that's fair."

"I mean, I could trade you tips on what to get Pepper if you could help me out."

"I already got Pepper's present. But most of your suggestions would probably be out of my budget."

Tony looked slightly panicked.

"Yeah but Bruce, I'm not... I don't do thoughtful gifts. I just throw money at things and people and they resolve themselves and money doesn't work on Steve."

"No, it doesn't."

"But it's our first Christmas together and it's a big thing for him and I just... I want to get it right."

"Well what does he like? You know what he likes Tony, we've been through this."

"He... he likes to sketch... and paint and stuff."

"Yeah, he does. That's a good start. He also likes you."

"Yeah but that doesn't help because he already has me, I can't give him something he already has for Christmas, that's the whole point."

"This is true." Bruce was smiling now "But you've figured that much out."

"Are you going to give me any more hints or are you going to continue doing that sardonic thing?"

"I like the sardonic thing. I'm good at it. I've spent a long time mastering it."

"...You know, fuck you. You are no help."

Bruce saluted with a bag full of snowman soup, blinking as the candy cane hit him in the eye. 

"I love you too Tony. Now go figure out what you're going to get Freedom personified for Christmas."

"I'm not getting Captain America a present, that would be easy, I could just take the piss, but I'm getting something for Steve Rogers and really I just want to make him happy."

"And you will. You think you're awful at it but you're not. You're really not. And I know that whatever you figure out will make him so happy because you're very good at that little earnest thing you do when you think you've fucked up, which is pretty much constantly."

"You are... " Tony sputtered for a moment, staring at him, then turned around and walked out, heading down to the workshop and muttering about nobody respecting him. Bruce smiled and went back to his industrial production line, knowing that he'd have to get it all done with a decent number of spares before Clint came in and found out. He would be so happy and so enthusiastic, and Bruce couldn't wait to see his face and share this little bit of Christmas with him. He wasn't sure what Clint's memories of this time of year were like, but he was certain he would have the opportunity to find out, and hopefully to help him make some better ones with his real family.

Clint's childhood had been far from ideal. None of them had the best memories, but even Bruce, who had known Clint before anyone else, didn't really know what he felt at this time of year. It had been spring when they had spent those few weeks in the same home, and then Bruce had moved on and Clint had disappeared despite every attempt Bruce had made to keep in touch with him. Most of his memories involved bare rooms and cold, with no presents, or something small or stolen. He had been so very grateful for those little things, though this opportunity to have a real Christmas had him just about as excited as Steve was. There had been a few Christmases that he hadn't spent staring in through other windows and dreaming about what he might have had if he was worth loving. In the circus sometimes they'd done something special, but it was always a busy season and though they got the day off, Clint had usually spent it in bed, frantically catching up on sleep in an attempt to get his body to heal past the strains and stresses and all the other pressures it had on it. Other years he had managed to seduce himself into a lonely bed for the night, but with Christmas being a time for family, it was hard to find someone willing to take home a whore unless it was a present to themselves, and although it was nice not to be alone, they weren't usually the best of clients. One or two times he'd managed to find a church that was running some kind of shelter, but that had never been very often and it certainly hadn't lasted. Homeless was fine, homeless and a known prostitute? Considerably less so.

Now, though, he was sat in the living room, staring up at the tree and cuddled in Coulson's lap. They were very sweet together, and Bruce smiled to watch them as Clint shifted a little to whisper something in Coulson's ear and the Agent smirked a little in response. He didn't know what had been said. He didn't want to know either, Clint and Phil were fairly active in the kind of department he only wanted to know about in some detached capacity to be sure that Clint was happy. The smirks were morphed to laughter as a cushion hit them both in the face, thrown with pinpoint accuracy by Natasha, who was eerily good with improvised projectiles. 

Bruce turned back to his work, and smiled, leaning back into the body that appeared behind him as slim hands settled on his waist. 

"Hello beautiful." He stole a kiss "How was work?"

Pepper pulled a face.

"It shouldn't be too bad given how close it is to Christmas. Everyone is getting their usual time off, all of the board are too busy on the usual social whirl to be giving me their usual headache, but somehow I can't seem to shake off the paperwork that perpetually dogs me."

He turned and slid his own arms around her waist to draw her into another kiss.

"If you can't shake it off, let's shrug it off together. You've earned a break too. There are plenty of CEOs who work fewer hours than you do."

"Most of them aren't female. Most of them are qualified."

"Some of them are female, some of them are not qualified, some of them are there because that is what they are good at and nobody would challenge that Stark Industries has done just as well, if not, better, with you at the helm in comparison to Tony's days of leadership. And that's not casting aspersions on Tony but he's a creative genius and the majority of those who are creative genii are not made to lead."

Pepper looked about willing to concede the point, and just to seal the argument, Bruce offered a winning smile.

"Besides, you've more than earned being spoiled rotten, so if not for yourself, take a little time off for me so I can enjoy looking after you. It can be my Christmas present?"

Pepper laughed, and the two of them exchanged another kiss. Bruce glanced up to check the ceiling. They had not discussed the use and positioning of mistletoe, but he had a feeling that some would probably materialise anyway. Probably in Clint's hands. Probably when they tried to have a little party. He was not dealing with the fall out of Clint trying to kiss Drew again, even if it was for a bet. Captain Danvers did not approve.

"So what would you like to do for Christmas, beautiful?" Bruce definitely intended on making the most of the fact that Pepper would surely be working less over the festive period.

"Well we're having it here, right? Steve already asked me... I think he really wants to do a big family thing, and I think that would be a great thing for all of you. To be honest, it would be good for me as well because I haven't had anywhere to go for Christmas for a long time. Tony always spent the actual day alone and he was all I had. Sometimes Happy and I would do stuff but... well, he still has a family and stuff too so that could be awkward. There will be the usual traditional Stark party on Christmas Eve and then... I think there's a smaller thing here on the day."

"So I can count on having you for Christmas?"

"You won't have me all to yourself, but yes I'll be here." She smiled and nuzzled closer. They may have been sequestered in the kitchen where they could be interrupted at any moment, but both of them were too grateful for these quiet little moments to want it to end yet. "I have a lot of social engagements and charity things in the next week or so too."

Bruce groaned, but Pepper's smile didn't falter. She had a little surprise for him that might hopefully make that a little bit less bad as a prospect.

"But... I have officially taken from Christmas Day till the 2nd of January off work. So you have me, for all of that time. It might not be as much as you might have hoped for, but we both have a lot of obligations. So I promise in that time we can do whatever you want. I'm hoping that involves a lot of lie ins and breakfast in bed, but if you want to go somewhere special we can."

"No. Here is special enough. Here is home. And like you said, we both have obligations. I should be in New York. Hulk doesn't travel that fast and if we went far then that might put the team at risk. I can't do that. They're my family."

"I know. They're my family too." she admonished him with a gentle poke on the nose, then stole one more kiss. "I desperately need a shower, so I'll go do that and see you at dinner, alright?"

"Perfect..." He smiled softly to himself as he watched her go.

Tony was nowhere to be found anymore, and as Christmas approached he became a passing vision who would appear in a whirlwind of determined purpose in search of caffeine and occasional sustenance. It was very odd. Of course, he always materialised when the sirens sounded, and he never once missed a call out, but Steve was finding it harder to extract him from the workshop than a limpet from its shell and it was upsetting him a little. He would never show it of course, but the two of them needed each other a great deal. They were the one thing that stopped the nightmares. Steve still woke screaming some nights, or drenched in cold sweat, but Tony was always there, Tony was there, and now he had Bucky back too and the whole thing was just... it was better. And it was Tony that had made it better. Tony who was still occasionally paralysed by flashbacks to Afghanistan, by flashbacks to the other side of the portal and a part of the universe no mortal eyes had ever seen. They needed each other, and Steve was panicked that whatever was causing Tony to seemingly withdraw from him was his fault, that he had done something wrong or said something wrong, maybe that Tony wasn't adjusting to Bucky's presence as well as Steve had hoped. Of course Tony was insecure and he and Bucky had so much in common and such a history, but there was nothing Steve could do to reassure him unless he could get hold of Tony at all. For the moment that was seemingly impossible.

What Tony was doing in there was frantically designing and engineering, using all his talents. For Natasha there was a new set of perfectly balanced throwing knives, designed in a new polymer which made them very lightweight. For Clint there was a new quiver and arm guard. Tony was perpetually trying to improve the bow but bird brain sometimes yelled at him for that so sometimes it was easier to enhance the tech around it until Clint would let him close again. He had finally thought of something for Steve too, but that had to wait until the new polymer was synthesised which would make pants for Hulk which would stretch when Bruce transformed. Bruce would get tea, Pepper would get shoes, that was easy. Rhodey got a bottle of old scotch, and an upgrade for the War Machine suit. He didn't know what to get Bucky. Agent was a stab proof vest to send a very pointed (or not as the case may be) message about what his team made of him getting hurt. Luckily he hadn't drawn anyone else in the Secret Santa. It was just Pepper, so alongside the Louboutins Jarvis had said she wanted, Tony had found a few other little things he thought might help make her hate him slightly less. Not that she hated him exactly, but he didn't make her life easy and he never had done.

It was easier to do this, in a way. Of course he was worrying as usual about what people would make of the things he'd made them, and he wasn't exactly living with the easiest group of people to get things for either (who knew about Norse Gods anyway) but everything he made had a little bit of himself in it. That made him nervous. Historically, trusting people with pieces of himself had rarely worked out well for him. Then again, if he was going to do it, now was the time to try, and these were surely the people if anyone would be. 

Rhodey and Pepper he knew he could trust, and Steve was so damn earnest. He never knew what Tasha was thinking, but they seemed to be on better terms these days. He had taken her returning Rhodey to him as payback for that time she had nonconsensually stabbed him in the neck with a needle. It may have saved his life but a simple please wouldn't have gone amiss. Thor was, at times, disorientatingly simple. He was also technically a prince, but he didn't understand Midgardian technology that well, so even if he didn't use his gift for what it was intended for, at least he would be likely to view it as a harmless Midgardian novelty. That was something. 

Jane was easy, so was Darcy, so was Bruce. Bucky was new, and he was hard because he was a threat. But if Tony took a deep breath and made himself look past that, then Bucky wasn't that difficult either. Beneath it all, he was a man struggling to find his new identity, to define himself in terms of everything that had happened to him. Tony hadn't quite been in the same position, but his rebirth after Afghanistan gave him some idea of what to do. Clint was his favourite, though he would never admit it. Clint was the one person on the team who Tony could best relate to, someone else who'd had a shitty childhood, who'd made it by on their skills, was there for their skills, and beneath it all was just a normal guy. He wasn't sure what was up with Tasha but he was one hundred percent completely certain that she was not normal. And Agent drank coffee and had to deal with them all, so that was pretty easy too.

He just hoped, in a way, that they would understand what it meant for him to give them things like this. It wasn't something he did easily. He could make things, sure, that was what he did, he could manufacture and machine, but thought went into these. Thought and consideration, because... well, these were his friends. Without his friends, without this dysfunctional little family he had put together, he didn't really have anything. He had spent enough of his life with nothing that he didn't want to go back there. He knew he wasn't emotionally equipped for times like these, but the least he could do was keep them safe, was to give them tools that were the best, that he had made, that he could trust not to fail. Because if he could do that, then, well... when the chips were down he would have done his best, and their deaths would not come to join the hundreds, thousands of others which rested on his conscience. 

The superhero community as a whole took different views towards Christmas. They were fairly tightly knit on the whole (a notable exception being a certain Dr. Richards), but they knew that a time laden with such symbolism, such significance had the potential to be a big target for supervillainy. Officially the Avengers had been given the day off (nobody had dared to ask what Coulson had on Fury that had made him sign off on that), but that didn't mean they had a free pass if something arose. People negotiated a schedule which allowed for different groups to have their festivities, to spend time with their loved ones and enjoy the season, whilst ensuring the city was protected at all times. Another way of looking at it of course was that the night of the little Christmas party they had planned at Avengers tower was going to be a very bad one to try anything since the response would be swift, organised and merciless. Interrupting that would be just as bad as ruining movie night, but liable to piss off a lot more people.

By some miracle, Christmas Day dawned without incident and with the minimum of hangovers for the residents of the tower who could be affected by alcohol. Occasionally (mostly when the hangovers did make an appearance) Clint had been known to wax lyrical about how fundamentally unfair it was that Steve, Bucky, Thor, Bruce, and apparently Tasha could not get drunk. The rants were usually while holding his head and making impassioned pleas for alka seltzer and coffee. This time he woke up with Coulson and without both a headache and pants. His usual mental checks confirmed that everything seemed to point to it having been a very good night, and he was one of the first to bound downstairs to the kitchen, planning to make breakfast for everyone else, hoping that that would placate the early hour he was waking them for presents. It was silly, it was childish and immature, but he didn't care. He just wanted to enjoy it, and he didn't often get a chance to be silly and immature. He was just glad that everyone seemed to tolerate it when he was. 

He was surprised to find Bruce already there, though the doctor was often an early riser, and he grinned widely as he hugged his brother tightly.

"Merry Christmas Bruce..."

"And a Merry Christmas to you too Clint..." Bruce smiled, hugging him tightly, "I hope it's a good one, but I'm sure it will be."

"What are you doing up so early?"

"I'm making Pepper some breakfast."

"Well how about we club together and make everyone breakfast so everyone has to get up and we can open our presents and then spend the rest of the day eating so much that we can't move?"

Bruce was getting a fair idea as to why Clint loved Christmas so much.

"That sounds fair." he smiled, "I'll make some orange juice, and brew a few very large pots of coffee. You handle frying things, and I'll make the toast, does that sound fair?"

"Very fair." Clint got to work enthusiastically, and Bruce just smiled to himself. It was good to see flashes of innocence still, they were increasingly rare in a job which made you perpetually conscious of the seedy underbelly of humanity and the shadows which lurked beyond locked doors.

People filtered down sure enough, though Clint was prepared to swear that neither Tony, Pepper nor Jane had actually been awake when they materialised, and had instead been zombies drawn by the smell of freshly brewed coffee. After a cup (or three in Tony's case), they started to look a little but more conscious and aware of the situation, enough to mumble festive greetings that were actually coherent and snuggle close to their respective significant others at the very least. 

Bucky was a little bit quiet, though he was always quick to reply when somebody spoke to him, flashing them a quick, bright grin which vanished when they looked away. Natasha was feeding Darcy, with an indulgent little smile on her face which Clint was prepared to say was the most terrifying thing he'd seen in his life. Jane was cuddled on Thor's lap like a teddy bear, and Clint was about to complain when strong, familiar arms wrapped around him from behind and he was awarded a kiss on the cheek.

"Merry Christmas Clint. The bed got cold without you."

"I'm sorry sir, I just thought breakfast was a good idea..."

"Breakfast is always a good idea, so how about we all finish enjoying it when this... very impressive spread is done, so that we have room for lunch later, and go sit round the tree and open our presents."

"There's more to the day than presents."

"There is," he agreed mildly, "Of course there is, but what the important part of that is is sharing joy. It's about the giving, not the receiving."

"Are you saying that because you've donated to charity in our names again?"

"No, I'm saying it because this is a group of people who haven't really known what it is to be loved and valued anymore, and although it's cliche to say it's the thought that counts, for some of us, receiving thoughtful gifts is a real novelty and it can engender a very warm fuzzy feeling which is the realisation that maybe, just maybe you're loved and valued in the world, even if it's only by a select few who get to know the real you."

There was silence for a long moment, and Natasha was the one who broke it eventually.

"Sometimes, Sir, you are a dangerous man with words."

"Besides," Tony interrupted, "I already donated to charity. You know. Uh. Eight million. One for each of the Avengers."

"Eight?"

"Well, Agent obviously counts, and I figured that... even though we've got the best sniper in the world, it couldn't hurt to have a spare and Barnes seems to have become a bit of a fixture around here, and whether or not he's on the team, though I think he probably should be, he's definitely part of the family. So. Eight." the last word disappeared in a strangled squeak as Steve hugged him tightly and there was something croaked about not being able to breathe.

When he finally managed to extract himself from the super soldier hug, Tony cleared his throat and glanced over at Bucky awkwardly.

"Well, I guess following on from that you should probably go first... I don't know what the others got you, but here, this one's... this one's got your name on it."

He handed over a fairly heavy rectangular package, which Bucky took awkwardly. He had a lump in his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was gruffer than usual.

"I don't know what you could possibly give me that's more than you already have."

Tony waved his hand, but Bucky shook his head, refusing to let the man dismiss it.

"When I came back I was ready to destroy you if that was what it took, because of what your father did to my best friend. Finding out that he was dating you after that was hard to swallow and there were some nights I spent in the gym punching myself to exhaustion with the bags because the alternative would have been finding you. But... you fixed my arm, you gave me back the potential I thought I'd lost forever, and purpose without pain. You gave me a home, you gave me a family, even if at least one member of it wants to kill me. Even though you've had a shitty history with people, you still let me in and you... let me and Steve be friends again, even though we have history that could have intimidated you. I honestly can't imagine what more you could give me than that. Than any of that."

Everyone else stayed sat in awkward silence, but after a moment's hesitation, Tony steeled himself and shifted to look Bucky right in the eye.

"I don't know exactly how you felt then. Honestly I don't. I haven't been through what you've been through, haven't seen the things you've seen, but... I learned that I am an incredibly lucky man, and it would be wrong and selfish not to share at least a little bit of that fortune. I know... the value of a home, of friends, of family now because I had a chance to learn all those things here. And... when you came, you came because you had nowhere else to go. Because you'd lost everything, including your sense of self and you hardly knew who you were at all. I'm not even convinced you were that certain of your own name. And it's not the same, but I know how it feels to lose your identity like that. Everything I thought I was, everything I had learned to be, I had stood for, everything that had my name on it was turned on its head and thrown in my face when I woke up with a car battery inserted in my chest and found out that the family I didn't love or trust but which was the closest I had ever had to one before I met this fucked up bunch of people had paid to have me killed. I came out of that and I wasn't the same person who went into that cave. So I may not have fallen off a mountain, been brainwashed by creepy Russians Natasha please don't kill me it's a fair assessment, spent decades of my life as someone else and then broken through that conditioning to find fragments of two identities that don't seem to fit together. But I do understand a bit about what it's like to rebuild yourself from scratch. Unlike you, there was nothing about the person I had been which I particularly wanted to hang onto, but you were a good man once, and you can still remember that sometimes. I bet half the nights you wake up screaming are because the other times overwhelm it and you almost find yourself believing that everything good must have been a lie because how else could you have done those terrible things." 

Tony saw the man about to interrupt and held up his hand,

"I'm sorry, don't worry, you haven't woken anyone. I was just kind of extrapolating from the fact that... well, all of us have nights when we wake up screaming. Seems to me you sure as hell deserve a few. So. All I'm trying to do here is give you the proof that once upon a time you were a good man, it wasn't your imagination and that good man is still in there somewhere. You don't have to be that man again, there's a good chance you might not be able to. But that doesn't stop you being someone new and equally good. It's just that maybe there are pieces of him you wanna use in your new construction. Like people reuse building materials all the time. You chuck out the crap and you keep the good parts, and you keep building till it gets better, till you get something you can live with. That's literally all you can do. And all I can promise is that one day you'll realise you may not be perfect, but you're good enough, and that's... that's when it gets better. That's when you can start to live again."

Tears in his eyes that he would never admit to, Bucky pulled the paper off the present and revealed a photo album Tony had carefully collated with all of the pictures he had been able to find in Howard's collection of the Howling Commandos. He had got copies for Steve first, obviously, but this had seemed a worthy cause. And in a little plastic baggie sellotaped to the back cover was a set of dogtags bearing the name "James Buchanan Barnes".

"I tried not to dwell too much on how my dad got all of this, but, well... at least it's finally come home."

This time it was Bucky who hugged Tony, and slowly, awkwardly, the others joined in. None of them were untouched by the moment, though Natasha was doing her best to pretend, and even though it would take negotiation with SHIELD and between them all for that matter, it felt right that at Christmas they had all become a family, a team, not just a group of people who lived together. Not quite a miracle, but undeniably the magic of the season. And although everyone was surprised it had sprung from Tony Stark of all people, nobody had the heart to challenge that it felt right for Bucky to be an Avenger with them. After all, as Clint put it later, 'he's at least as fucked up as the rest of us, so what grounds do we have to reject him'.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the promised Christmas oneshot (IT'S CHRISTMAS UNTIL TWELFTH NIGHT TECHNICALLY) and has been slightly delayed due to revision, Christmas, my birthday, New Year, and my laptop falling down the stairs and shattering its screen. So I hope you can forgive it being perhaps a little later than you wanted. It was meant to just be about the team and how they approach Christmas, but it turned into how Bucky became an equal member of their fucked up little family. So, enjoy. Thanks to flightinflame for betaing!


End file.
